{"id":490198,"date":"2026-06-09T06:55:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T06:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/490198\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T06:55:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T06:55:24","slug":"what-is-the-defining-film-of-the-neo-horror-wave-world-of-reel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/490198\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is The Defining Film of the Neo Horror Wave? \u2014 World of Reel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Aronson, former distribution chief at Paramount and 20th Century Fox, speaking to The Wrap<\/a>, is expressing excitement at the success of \u201cBackrooms\u201d and \u201cObsession.\u201d He sees the emergence of Kane Parsons and Curry Barker as a \u201cmoment analogous to the launch of the American New Wave\u201d which kicked off in 1967 with the releases of Arthur Penn\u2019s \u201cBonnie and Clyde\u201d and Mike Nichols\u2019 \u201cThe Graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not the only one making such comparisons. Producers Jason Blum and James Wan opened the Produced By conference last Saturday with an optimistic assessment<\/a> of the film industry\u2019s future. Both argued that the horror genre, and now these new creative voices online are helping to revitalize Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Wan and Blum pointed to the breakout success of recent horror hits\u2014\u201cObsession\u201d and \u201cBackrooms\u201d\u2014as evidence that audiences are returning to theaters for original, low-budget genre films. Blum framed the moment in cultural terms, arguing that there is \u201calmost this feeling of the \u201970s\u201d emerging again. Wan added that horror is \u201csaving our industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner Bros. Pictures chief Mike De Luca reinforced the comparison<\/a>, drawing a direct parallel between today\u2019s horror and YouTube-bred filmmakers and the auteur movement of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cA little bit like the 70s, I would say the writer-director is the star again, which I think is fantastic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m not ready to declare that we\u2019re witnessing another 1974. \u201cBackrooms\u201d and \u201cObsession\u201d may have had groundbreaking rollouts, but they are nowhere near as great as \u201cThe Graduate\u201d or \u201cBonnie and Clyde.\u201d That said, they may still stand as defining examples of a shift that has been building for over a decade: Gen Z, and the slightly older generation before them, will go to movie theaters when a film feels like it was made for them\u2014particularly in the horror genre\u2014rather than simply marketed at them.<\/p>\n

So how did we get here?<\/p>\n

When looking at some of the most important film movements in American cinema, one has to start with the \u201cNew Hollywood\u201d movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Influenced by European art cinema and the social upheavals of the era, it ushered in a period of director-driven storytelling, moral ambiguity, and a challenge to established studio conventions.<\/p>\n

Other key movements followed. Most notably, the independent film boom of the 1980s and 1990s, powered by companies like Miramax and Sundance breakthroughs, expanded opportunities for lower-budget, character-driven films. This wave helped launch the careers of filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Todd Haynes, Alexander Payne, Richard Linklater, Darren Aronofsky, Spike Jonze, and Steven Soderbergh, among many others.<\/p>\n

More recently, the most significant American movement of the last few decades has arguably been the neo-horror wave, or what some like to call \u201celevated horror.\u201d Directors including Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, Jordan Peele, David Robert Mitchell, and Zach Cregger have helped shape its language. These filmmakers injected new creative energy into the genre while being influenced by the work of John Carpenter, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and David Cronenberg.<\/p>\n

In many ways, the emergence of the horror genre, and online-bred filmmakers, can be viewed as a hybrid of New Hollywood, the spirit of 1990s independent cinema, and the creative freedom of the neo-horror movement.<\/p>\n

Seen in that context, the breakout success of films like \u201cBackrooms\u201d and \u201cObsession\u201d feels not just like a YouTube phenomenon but also, and arguably more importantly, the continuation of an evolving modern horror wave.<\/p>\n

If New Hollywood defined the 1970s, independent cinema defined the 1990s, and neo-horror defined the 2010s, the emerging generation of horror films, which has bled into internet-native filmmaking, is helping shape the next major chapter in horror.<\/p>\n

Many cite Jordan Peele\u2019s \u201cGet Out\u201d as the spark that accelerated neo-horror, while Robert Eggers\u2019 \u201cThe Witch\u201d two years earlier signaled a different kind of arthouse genre film\u2014more patient, more atmospheric, more interested in dread than spectacle.<\/p>\n

However, a strong case can be made for Jennifer Kent\u2019s \u201cThe Babadook,\u201d from Australia. My pick would actually be David Robert Mitchell\u2019s minimalist \u201cIt Follows,\u201d which premiered at Cannes in 2014, as the true catalyst: a film that stripped the genre back to its essentials, rejected contemporary horror conventions, and reassembled them through a modern lens shaped by Carpenter-esque minimalism and analog unease. It felt like a turning point\u2014a reminder that horror still had room to move, mutate, and surprise.<\/p>\n

Parsons and Barker began uploading their popular short films online around the time of the boom of \u201cIt Follows,\u201d \u201cGet Out,\u201d \u201cHereditary,\u201d and \u201cThe Witch.\u201d Coincidence? Maybe. I haven\u2019t heard them explicitly cite any of these films or filmmakers as primary influences, but there\u2019s no denying that they likely would not have films currently playing in theaters, to large audiences, without the path carved by Peele, Eggers, Mitchell, and Aster.<\/p>\n

This is obviously a movement still in motion, rather than a finished chapter, the American New Wave last 12 years (\u201867-79). If earlier turning points include films like \u201cIt Follows,\u201d \u201cThe Babadook,\u201d and \u201cGet Out,\u201d then the question is whether today\u2019s breakout titles are continuation, culmination, or something entirely new. The answer may depend more on how audiences ultimately remember the films that defined their own era of discovery. <\/p>\n

So what do you think\u2014is there a single film that truly defines the neo-horror wave, or is it the accumulation of many that gives it shape?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Aronson, former distribution chief at Paramount and 20th Century Fox, speaking to The Wrap, is expressing excitement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-490198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}